Alright so let me walk you through how I dug into that legendary 2017 Cavs playoff run. Wanted to really see who showed up when it mattered most.
Started by pulling up the full roster list from that postseason. Old memory ain’t perfect so I double-checked * first – yeah, the full fifteen guys right there. Felt like looking at an old family photo seeing names like Derrick Williams and Dahntay Jones who barely got minutes.
Tracking Down the Numbers
Then came the real grind – hunting playoff stats for every single player. Manually pulled up postseason totals on Basketball-Reference for ten solid minutes. LeBron’s 32.8 points per game? Jumped right off the screen. Kyrie close behind him around 25. Kevin Love grabbing almost double-digit boards every night? Had that penciled in.
- LeBron: Nearly 10 assists a game alongside all that scoring. Crazy.
- Korver: Shooting 45% from deep like it was nothing. Perfect role player.
- Tristan: His offensive rebounds felt like pure hustle energy.
But man JR Smith’s numbers surprised me. Remembered his defense but stats showed him bricking shots left and right in earlier rounds. Then Finals Game 5 happens – dude snaps out of it big time.
The Real Eye-Opener
Pieced together the rotation patterns. Realized Coach Lue basically ran seven guys into the ground. LeBron averaged 42 damn minutes a night! Kyrie played 36 minutes per game on fresh-off-knee-surgery legs. Felt wild seeing how thin that bench really was beyond Frye and Deron Williams’ cameos.
Noticed how contributions changed round-to-round too. Channing Frye cooked Toronto then vanished against Golden State. Richard Jefferson? Played his heart out defensively every chance he got. Even Dahntay Jones got like 90 seconds in the Finals just to set a hard foul!
Wrapping My Head Around It
Sat back staring at my messy spreadsheet thinking – man this run was LeBron dragging corpses past Boston and Toronto then Kyrie morphing into a god against Golden State. That entire city was basically riding three dudes plus whatever Korver or TT could sprinkle in.
Honestly makes their collapse the next year way less surprising. Saw firsthand how unsustainable that workload was from the numbers. These cats were running on fumes and pure will by June. Modern teams would’ve blown out their hamstrings by round two playing minutes like that!
shakes head Still can’t believe they pulled it off looking back at the data. Bunch of old dudes and one generational talent writing NBA history one gutsy performance at a time.
